Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that George H.W. Bush may have hurt his son Jeb's chances in his bid for the White House with certain comments the former president made in a recent biogrpahy - comments that were less than gracious about Rumsfeld, former vice president Dick Cheney and his son George W. Bush.
"I was amazed that he said what he said when he said it, because I didn't think it was very complimentary of his son, George W. Bush, and I didn't think it was very helpful to his other son who was running for president," Rumsfeld said on Monday's Today Show. "So I thought it was kind of a strange thing for him to be doing."
Rumsfeld was referring to Jon Meacham's "Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush," in which Bush remarked that Rumsfeld served his son "badly" as the head of the Pentagon from 2001 to 2006, adding, "I don't like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything," according to Politico. In the book, Bush called Rumsfeld "arrogant" and also said former vice president Dick Cheney was "very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with" as his secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld noted that the dynamics of this year's election are "amazing" and said that Donald Trump running for president would have been "out of the question" if you had asked him years ago.
"It was out of the question," said Rumsfeld. "It's just amazing, this election year. It's so different from most of, if not all of the earlier ones I've experienced." He added: "The fact that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are able to draw 10, 15, 20, 30,000 people to hear them speak says there's something going on in our country that they're appealing to in a very interesting, unusual way, The Hill reported.
